1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus and an image processing method and, more particularly, to an image processing apparatus for performing processes in accordance with instruction data which expresses a plurality of processes to be performed to document data as a series of processes and an image processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional complex machine in which a facsimile function, a scanner function, a printer function, and the like are integrated with a copying machine is proposed. Such a complex machine is connected to a network to which a personal computer (PC) or the like is connected, so that a paperwork which uses a copying machine, a facsimile, and the like using paper as main media can be associated with document processes which are converted to electronic form on a PC.
More specifically, a paper document can be scanned to transfer the scanned data to a personal computer, a document received by a facsimile function can be directly transmitted to a PC as image data without being printed, or another process can be performed. In addition, after a paper document or a facsimile-received document converted to electronic form, a large number of procedures and processes are desirably associated with each other and automated.
For this reason, the following technique is proposed. That is, a large number of job templates each constituted as a computerized file in which a desired setting related to an item to be set by a complex machine in advance is described are prepared according to process contents and stored, a job template corresponding to desired contents is designated in the large number of job templates, and the process is executed.
However, in this technique, since there are a large number of job templates, a long time was disadvantageously required to find out and designate a desired job template among the large number of job templates.
As a technique, which can be applied to solve this problem, the following technique is disclosed. That is, desired documents are retrieved from a large number of documents, which are stored in advance, and basic information retrieval is performed depending on an information request of the user to support next-stage retrieval (narrowing down) in the retrieved document group. On the basis of a retrieval result obtained as described above, information of an operable output screen is generated to the user and transferred to the user terminal (for example, see Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2001-306594 (FIG. 2 pages 10 to 11)).
When this technique is applied to a complex machine and a PC which are connected to the network, the information of the output screen can be transferred to the complex machine and the PC. For this reason, the transferred output screen can be displayed on the apparatus side such as the PC or the complex machine.
However, in the above prior art, on the PC or complex machine side, the transferred output screen can be displayed. However, in the function of this output screen consideration was not given to the size, functions, and the like of a display device arranged on the PC or complex machine side. For this reason, there were occasions when requests had to be made to transfer, information of an output screen depending on a display pattern on the processing apparatus side connected to the network.